G.H. dethrones Barstow

By TOMOYA SHIMURA, Staff Writer

Thursday

Nov 5, 2009 at 8:33 PMNov 5, 2009 at 8:43 PM

VICTORVILLE • The end of an era can mean a beginning of a new one.

Both the Granite Hills boys and girls cross country teams cruised to championships at the Desert Sky League finals Thursday at Victor Valley College. The Cougars boys became the first DSL champion other than Barstow, which had dominated the league since its inception in 2000. Meanwhile, the Cougars girls defended their first-ever DSL title from last year.

"I'm proud of how the boys came together and worked hard all this year to achieve the goal to get the DSL championship," Granite Hills coach Jim McManus said. "We've got additional goals beyond that, which is to try to do extremely well in CIF and go back to state like a couple of years ago."

The Granite Hills boys, ranked No. 5 in CIF-Southern Section Division III, took the first four places. Cody Jordan became the individual champion with a time of 16 minutes, 6 seconds. Jordan, who took ninth at the league finals last year, won every DSL meet he competed in this season.

"I was thinking at the starting line how last year it was just a Barstow sweep, and I wanted to make a statement that Granite was going to be No. 1 this year," Jordan said.

Sophomore Ismael Griego came in second at 16:10 followed by Robert Sager (16:21) and Jacob Lindstrom (16:23). Chris Rogone took seventh and Tanner Thomas was eighth for the Cougars.

"What's important, I think, is that our boys grouped well together today," McManus said. "The gap was about 35 seconds and that's very important for a good team effort. They worked very well together and they worked hard since July so I've got to say they deserve everything they've earned."

Victor Corral led the Aztecs in ninth place with a time of 16:59, and Martin Santillan of Silverado rounded out the top 10 as the Hawks took third overall.

Burroughs' Caleb Rosales and Brandon Haugen finished fifth and sixth, respectively, and the Burros took second as a team.

On the girls side, Granite Hills freshman Chelsea Bennis (19:37) beat teammate Grace McManus by 33 seconds to win the race, which consisted of just three schools. The Cougars nearly swept the top seven with Morgan Lacey in fourth and Wendy Roberts in fifth followed by Danielle Ashton and Rosanna Lam.

"I thought it was fun," Bennis said about her first season in high school. "I got to run with more competitive runners. I thought it was really cool."

But the Cougars' goal for this season is to get to the CIF-Southern Section finals, which they've never done before, Jim McManus said. To qualify for the CIF-SS finals, the Cougars need to finish in the top 13 in their Division III race at preliminaries on Nov. 14.

Jennifer Gutierrez and Samantha Knutsen came in third and eighth, respectively, to help Silverado clinch a postseason spot.

Barstow had just one runner in the girls race, and Victor Valley didn't have either boys or girls teams due to a lack of interest this season. Because the DSL doesn't have five teams, only the top two boys and girls teams make it to the CIF-Southern Section preliminaries.

The Aztecs boys don't have anyone returning from last year's state championship team, and Corral, who was on the junior varsity team, is the only runner who ran for retired coach Jim Duarte. Five of them had never even run competitively before.

"They couldn't even run like 10 minutes," Barstow's new coach Curtis Bell said. "After a whole season, now they can go for two hours. So they've made a lot of progress."